At https://archaeologynewsnetwork.blogspot.co.uk/2010/03/oldest-man-made-st... ... I missed this back in 2010 - a 23,000 year old stone wall in front of a cave in Lalambaka in Greece, probably built to protect residents of the cave from cold winds or wild animals. It is apparently the oldest known example of a man made structure. It has all the hall marks of a Mesolithic repertoire but here might be a problem as Mesolithic people elsewhere appear after the end of the Late Glacial Maximum (but this is slam bang in the middle of it).

One from William. Why Halley's Comet may be linked to famine 1500 years ago. Sounds almost like Patrick McCafferty and Mike Baillie in their book, 'The Celtic Gods' - but it comes from Dallas Abbott. Did a piece of the comet slam into the Earth in AD536? This is already attributed to two volcanoes - now conceded by Baillie. However, Abbott approaches it slightly differently - and combines volcanoes with impact (did one spark the other?) The theory evolved after Abbott was looking at Greenland ice cores laid down between 533 and 540.

A study in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B (January 2018) have been looking at lizards in Australasia, Melanesia and Polynesia. We are told that when you scroll back the distribution of geckos, and their variants, they have a common ancestor that may go back to the Vitiaz Arc, a near continuous chain of islands that stretched across the Western Pacific 30 to 40 million years ago (during the Oligocene). Nowadays, the arc is represented by landforms such as the Philippines and a string of islands as far as Fiji.

This story is again interesting as far as changing sea levels and ocean configuration is concerned. At https://www.scotsman.com/lifestyle/archaeologists-survey-scotland-s-fore... ... archaeologists are surveying Scotland's submerged forests (rather, wooded regions under the waves). This seems to revolve around the Bay of Ireland in the Orkneys and Benbecula in the Outer Hebrides.

At https://phys.org/print436032776.html ... sent in by William. Dhaskalios, a nearby island but once a promontory of Keros, was at one time almost completely covered in monumental structures of gleaming white marble. Another slant on the same story as in an earlier post.

Sent in by Robert - go to https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-01074-6 ... which questions the idea of the Late Heavy Bombardment, a theory which has had a somewhat extended life. The bombardment is thought to have occurred half a billion years after our planet was formed. In the process all hell was let loose as a barrage of asteroids remodeled the surface of the Earth. Only after this stream of space debris had quietened down was Life able to evolve. However, it seems mounting evidence has caused a body of researchers to question the hypothesis.

Pierre Gosselin provides a guest post by Kenneth Richards which has some interesting information - especially if you've visited hot springs in Canada, a very cold part of the world. Well, Greenland is a lot colder than most of Canada and it too has geothermal hot springs - right under the glaciated region. Go to http://notrickszone.com/2018/01/24/groundbreaking-agw-undermining-study-... ... and well I never.

Diamonds with garnets can form at depths within Earth's Manetle. Earth scientists, it is said, made a discovery that 550km beneath the surface - oxydised iron. This is similar tro rust. It was found within garnets within diamonds - we are told. How does iron become rusty within the Mantle? One might point a finger at water in the Mantle - but not these guys. We know that iron exists as a metal in the core and Mantle - or so the mainstream songsheet assures us (and why not - a reasonable deduction).